Anger

Anger

Fear and suffering orient the system toward its own vulnerability. Anger inverts this: it externalizes the threat, simplifying the world into self-versus-obstacle. Its geometry requires valence and arousal, plus a feature not in the standard toolkit—other-model compression:

• $\valence < 0$ (obstacle to viability)
• $\arousal$ high (energized, mobilized for action)
• $\text{dim}(\text{other-model}) \ll \text{dim}(\text{other-model})_{\text{normal}}$ (the other becomes a caricature)
• Externalized causal attribution (the problem is out there)

Anger simplifies. The other-model collapses into a low-dimensional obstacle-representation. Self-model may be complex, but the other becomes flat, predictable, opposable. Anger feels powerful and stupid simultaneously. You're burning cognitive resources on a cartoon.

In $\iota$ terms: anger is a targeted $\iota$ spike toward a specific entity. The other person stops being a subject with interiority and becomes an obstacle, a mechanism, a thing to be overcome. Other-model compression is $\iota$-raising applied to one entity while $\iota$ toward the self remains low (you are still fully a subject; they are not). This asymmetric $\iota$ is what enables violence—you cannot harm someone you are perceiving at low $\iota$—and it is why the aftermath of anger often involves guilt: $\iota$ drops back, the other’s interiority returns, and you confront what you did to a person while perceiving them as a thing.

Other-model compression is not one of the core structural dimensions. It emerges as essential for anger specifically—the affect cannot be characterized without it.